


To Weigh So Little on the World

by Haecceity



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Horror, Human Experimentation, Prophecy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 19:07:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haecceity/pseuds/Haecceity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alric Rahl creates the Mord'Sith</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Weigh So Little on the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hrhrionastar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/gifts).



> The bond between a Mord'Sith and Lord Rahl. Maybe how Mord'Sith get their Breath of Life or magic-repelling powers? -from hrhrionastar

Alric Rahl was a tall, well-built blond man. He easily outmassed the girl in front of him two or three times over. Her auburn hair hid her face from him but he knew by now what she would look like. The blood vessels in her eyes would be breaking into red spots and her lips would be turning a cyanotic blue and her tongue would be turning black as Alric pumped the air out of the invisible cage he’d cast around her. He gave her a moment to stop twitching before dropping the cage.

“Now,” he said to the brunette girl at his left. “Bring her back.”

“I don’t know how,” the girl mewled.

Alric prodded her with an Agiel. “Think! How would you call her back?” The girl continued sobbing helplessly and Alric began to feel irritated. “Think, girl! You’re one of the best here.”

The girl slumped to the floor, continuing to sob. She didn’t even try to wipe away the tears and mucus that flowed down her face. Prodding her again with the Agiel only produced screaming and writhing.

“If you don’t save her, she’ll die.” Alric growled. It turned his stomach to see the girl curl up into a ball and rock. He curled his fist in frustration. The secret had to be in here somewhere. If the girl couldn’t call back her own sister, what further motivation could he provide? He grabbed the girl by the scruff of her neck and handed her off to the guard outside the soundproofed workroom. Stomping over to his notebook, Alric studied the grace he’d sketched again. “I’m missing something,” he muttered.

“Sir,” a guard said diffidently. “You wanted to be reminded when it was time for your son to go to bed.”

Looking around, Alric realized hours had passed. “Yes. Thank you, lieutenant.” Alric set his workbook back into his desk and renewed the protective spells. As he went upstairs he thought more about the problem of how to get the girls to reach across the Veil. When he came to his son’s bedroom and saw his little boy’s smile, he answered with a smile of his own. “Who’s a big boy today, Cef? How old are you five?”

Cef giggled and shook his head.

“Six?”

“Seven!” Cef shouted, giggling harder.

“Seven? That’s a lot of birthdays. You’re practically a man now.” Alric tousled his son’s blond hair and picked him up with one arm. “That’s why I have a special present for you today but you can’t use it yet.”

“What is it?” Cef piped curiously. His eyes were the same shade of blue as his father’s.

“There’s two parts: the story and the magic. Which do you want first?” Alric turned and sat down with his son still under his arm.

“The story!” Cef said, hugging Alric tightly.

“Very wise,” Alric said sincerely. “We Rahls will always have lots of magic but knowledge is much harder to come by.” Alric’s smile widened to see the way his son beamed at the praise. “The story goes like this:

“The day you were born a witch came to visit me. She said she’d had a vision for many, many years in the future. Someday a son of my blood, your blood, our blood would be born and he will be the one who saves the world. But he’ll need help from us because it is so far in the future.

She told me that he’ll need help from a woman who can bring souls across the Veil. That was exactly what I was studying when I met your mother. We know the Shadow People aren’t really our loved ones. They probably weren’t ever even human. That’s part of what makes them so dangerous. They don’t think the way we do. What I was looking for was a way to touch those souls in the grasp of the Creator and the Keeper. Our magic flows from them but they haven’t spoken to us in generations upon generations.

She said it wasn’t enough to hear the dead. She said the woman would need to bring back the recently dead. And she told me the secret.”

“What is it?” Cef asked breathlessly. His blue eyes were wide with the thrill of a child who believes in the boogeyman and believes his father will keep him safe.

“You know I love you and I will protect you from harm.” Alric said and waited for Cef to nod. He pulled the Agiel from his pocket just out of Cef’s reach. “This is an Agiel. Touching it will hurt more than you can imagine.” He brought it closer and waited for Cef to touch it. The boy reached out with one index finger and gingerly touched the rod. He squeaked and put his finger in his mouth as if it had been burned, looking at his father with tear filled eyes.

“When you’re older, you’ll be able to use it to help girls become women who can bring back the dead. When you’re older. It’ll hurt you but it won’t leave anything worse than a scar. Pain just means that your body is resisting the power. You see, our bodies are meant to bear our own powers or power like our own but the power of the dead is so different our very bodies rebel.” Alric said soothingly. “But we can’t let our bodies win. Our will needs to overpower the treachery of our bodies.” Alric set the Agiel beside the chest at the foot of Cef’s bed. “But that’s not for today.” He hugged Cef close. “We have a legacy that will be remembered for ages to come.” He smiled at Cef and saw his eyes clear. “Time for bed.” He kissed the top of Cef’s head and tucked his son in. “I love you, Cef.”

“Love you too, daddy.” Cef muttered sleepily.

Alric closed his son’s door almost silently. After a moment’s consideration he headed back down to his workshop instead of up to his bedroom. “Has the new shipment arrived?” he asked the watch officer. When the man told him no, Alric frowned. “Well, when they do, make sure you sort them immediately. Immediately, you hear?”

He clumped back upstairs and fell asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. He awakened with no memory of dreaming, only a continued sense of purpose. Maybe today he would get it right.

Alric picked a different girl as he was eating breakfast in his workshop. This one was about twelve with stringy blond hair and big brown eyes. “You’re going to help me screen the girls. Tell me which ones seem likely to help us.”

The girl nodded quietly, hunching in on herself.

“Show some pride, girl. You're helping with the most important magical working of our era.” Alric said absently, trying not to sneer at the girl. She had had some success in wielding an Agiel herself and so she was on the list to be encouraged.

With obvious effort, she held herself straighter and nodded more firmly. 

“Better,” Alric said dubiously. “Bring in the first one.” The questions had been refined over years of seeing which kind of subjects responded to the Agiel and which kind fell to pieces. “Have you experienced menarche?”

“What?” said a girl whose documentation said she was eleven. 

“Do you bleed, girl?”

“Yes.”

“Next.” Alric said, gesturing for the new girl to be taken away. The changes brought on by adulthood made bonding with the Agiel difficult. Menarche was an imperfect measurement of when those changes began but Alric wasn’t going to waste time being exact when nature gave him such an easily discernible sign a subject wasn’t suitable. He had considered including boys at one point but the onset of their puberty wasn’t as easy to determine.

The next girl was sobbing hysterically but she shook her head violently when he asked if she’d begun having a monthly flow.

“Are you known to have a temper?” Alric asked brusquely.

The girl shook her head but the girl beside Alric tapped his elbow and shook hers. Alric wished he knew what it was about the hot-tempered ones that made them hard to bond with the Agiel. His hypothesis was that the sweet-tempered ones embraced so many aspects of life that it made it easier for them to interface with the Agiel. He wasn’t sure how to test that though. He merely nodded to show the girl he’d understood and plowed forward with the questions.

“Have you ever seen someone die? Are all your family members still alive? Have you ever killed anything yourself?” Each answer he wrote down carefully. The witch had told him she was giving him the key he needed but he had found that as with all magic, it was cryptic and hard to pin down. “The path of pain will open the door but only they can allow death into their hearts” could mean any number of things in archaic terms. Death was never simple as a magical concept.

He tapped his stylus against the logbook after all the girls had answered all the questions. Alric noticed the blonde girl was back to cringing so he ordered the guards to take her back to her cell. Such behavior was an unwelcome distraction.

“Bring the parents of as many of the girls as you can track down.” Alric told the watch officer. Maybe they would know more, maybe they would have the key to unlocking their daughters’ potential.

“It may take months,” the watch officer warned.

“It takes as long as it takes. Just like everything else on this project.” Alric sighed.

Over the next few months Alric asked dozens of parents dozens of questions until he had a frustration fueled epiphany. He grabbed a brunette from the cells and sat her down in front of her father. “Kill him,” Alric said softly.

The father looked like a baffled goose, puffing up with anger and fear. “Now wait a minute.”

“No,” Alric said. “This makes sense. She loves you, she needs to kill you to bridge the gap between her Han and Death.”

The girl whimpered and shook her head.

“Yes,” Alric ordered. “He sold you to us. Haven’t rumors been going around of the girls who disappear up here in my castle and are never heard from again? He knew when he sold you. He was willing to let you die. Have your vengeance.”

“Don’t you dare!” the father roared at the child.

The girl retreated into the corner with her hands in front of her face. 

Alric nodded to the guards to restrain the father. He walked over to the girl and knelt next to her. “It’ll be alright,” Alric whispered in her ear. He pulled the Agiel out, teeth gritted against its humming ache. He held it out to the girl.

She looked at him with wide, frightened green eyes.

“Or you can go back to your cell and I’ll find some other girl who will obey me. You’ll be left alone until you’re interested in participating. I don’t have time for naughty children.”

She bared her teeth and snatched the Agiel from his hand. With a scream, she held it against her father’s throat until he stopped screaming and twitching. Panting, she turned to Alric. 

“Very good.” Alric patted her shoulder. “Give her some of the steak we’re having tonight.” He tried to take the Agiel from her.

“Can I keep it?” she asked, stroking it lovingly.

“How intriguing,” he murmured to himself. “Yes, you may.” As he went to dinner with his son, Alric began coming up with new tests for the girl and her Agiel.

Later one of Alric’s sorcerers went rogue. One of the girls on the new protocol stopped him with the fascinating side effect that she then controlled his magic.

“By touching his Han it became wrapped in yours. You don’t just touch the Han of others, you grab it, make it yours.” Alric said thoughtfully to his logbook. “Dominate it. Subordinate it to your will.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “But I need you subordinate to me.”

He took an Agiel in his hand. He could see the layers of spells he’d bound to it but no one could predict every interaction. All of them were linked, if he changed the nature of one, he’d change the nature of all of them. And only he knew the recipe. It was so important he didn’t dare commit it even to his logbook in cipher.

There was one final safety precaution he could add. It would keep everything happening the way it should. It was necessary. He closed his eyes and thought of his son.

***

_The Agiel kissed Richard… he spun out over the edge… Denna’s breath brought him back… her essence mixing with his… changing him…_

_***_

_“Do you want Richard to live, or don’t you?” Shota demanded._

_“You’re right. Wizards can’t use their magic against a Mord-Sith, and neither can witches.” Cara said with certainty._

_Richard watched without interfering while Cara shoved her Agiel into Shota’s stomach._

_It was necessary._


End file.
